Trump sending additional troops to border
5,200 on active duty will be largest deployment along frontier in decades
WASHINGTON — Homeland Security and Pentagon officials said on Monday that they will send 5,200 troops, military helicopters and giant spools of razor wire to the Mexican border in the coming days to brace for the arrival of Central American migrants President Donald Trump is calling “an invasion.”
The troop deployment, one week before the U.S. midterm elections, appears to be the largest U.S. activeduty mobilization along the U.S.-Mexico boundary in decades and amounts to a significant militarization of American border security.
Air Force Gen. Terrence O’Shaughnessy, the chief of U.S. Northern Command, told reporters Monday that the deployments, dubbed Operation Faithful Patriot, already are underway. He said the military, working alongside U.S. Customs and Border Protection, will focus first on “hardening” the border in Texas, followed by Arizona and California.
crawling out in surrender, showed no clear signs of injury in his courtroom appearance, though he moved very little. At the notice to rise for the judge, one of two public defenders representing him for the day’s hearing touched his arm, as if to assure him that they knew he would not stand.
Bowers declined to have the judge read the full criminal complaint, or the penalties should he be found guilty. He was ordered held without bail and his next hearing was scheduled for Thursday.
In the mostly empty front row, two members of the Dor Hadash congregation watched the hearing closely. Two of their fellow members had been setting up for Torah study on Saturday morning when the synagogue was attacked. One, Daniel Leger, is still in the hospital; the other, Dr. Jerry Rabinowitz, was killed.
“To witness,” said Jean Clickner, a lawyer and member of Dor Hadash, explaining why she had come to the hearing. “Witnessing is what we do. That’s part of Jewish theory, to witness and remember.”
Jon Pushinksy, her husband, sometimes practiced law in that same courtroom. He had steeled himself not to react, he said, though he said that Bowers did not present the face of villainy one might have expected from a person accused of such hatred and violence.
“I was really there thinking of Jerry and Dan, of what good people they are,” he said, adding that he and Clickner were not in court as official representatives of Dor Hadash. “It was important, I think, for somebody to be there on their behalf, and also as a member of the congregation, to say and to represent visually that we are still here and we are going to be here.”
After the hearing, the White House announced that President Donald Trump would be visiting Pittsburgh on Tuesday with the first lady, a decision that had drawn criticism — and prompted disagreement within Pittsburgh’s Jewish community — before it was even announced.
Two Jewish groups had called on Trump earlier in the day to back down from inflammatory rhetoric that they said seemed to be encouraging the most radical fringes of American society.
The Pittsburgh chapter of Bend the Arc: Jewish Action, a progressive Jewish group focused on social justice in the United States, said in an open letter to Trump that he was “not welcome in Pittsburgh until you fully denounce white nationalism.”
The letter, which had 26,000 signatures on Monday morning, said Trump’s language had given confidence to white nationalists.
“For the past three years your words and your policies have emboldened a growing white nationalist movement,” the letter said. “You yourself called the murderer evil, but yesterday’s violence is the direct culmination of your influence.”
The chairman of the board of Bend the Arc: Jewish Action is Alexander Soros. He is the son of George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist and major donor to Democratic candidates, who is Jewish and who survived Nazi occupation in Hungary.
Soros is repeatedly cited in right-wing conspiracy theories, and was targeted in last week’s wave of mailed pipe bombs.
Another progressive Jewish group, IfNotNow, invited Americans to a nationwide call this week, saying that the attack in Pittsburgh was “not an isolated incident” and that now, a week before midterm elections, “is the time to act.”
Indeed, some in Pittsburgh’s Jewish community, including members of the congregations that were attacked, have said openly that they did not want Trump to come. Others said they would be glad for a visit from Trump, including Rabbi Jeffrey Myers of the Tree of Life synagogue.
“The president of the United States is always welcome,” Myers said on CNN on Monday. “I am a citizen. He’s my president. He is certainly welcome.”
The mayor of Pittsburgh, Bill Peduto, in comments to reporters before the announcement of the visit, said the White House should first ask victims’ families if they wanted a presidential visit.
“Our attention and our focus is going to be on them,” the mayor said, of the funeral services. He added, “We do not have enough public safety officials to provide enough protection at the funerals and to be able at the same time draw attention to a potential presidential visit.
“If the president is looking to come to Pittsburgh, I would ask that he not do so while we are burying the dead.”
The first funerals for the victims will take place Tuesday: a service for the Rosenthal brothers, Cecil and David, and one for Rabinowitz of Dor Hadash.
On Monday, the streets around the Tree of Life synagogue were still cordoned off with yellow police tape. A memorial of flowers, candles and handwritten messages to the dead had formed at a street corner nearby. A steady stream of people visited the memorial through the chilly and gray afternoon, as an officer in a police cruiser kept watch close by.
The Jewish Community Center in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood was serving as a base of operations for FBI agents, and as a gathering area for elderly residents and for volunteers with the Red Cross and Salvation Army. Cathy Samuels, the center’s senior director of marketing and development, said the staff had barely paused since Saturday morning when they first got the news of the shooting.
“We quickly realized people needed a place to nestle and wait for information, so we became that place,” she said.